For a while now, I’ve been curious about how climate advocacy works at the city level. A city sits right at the sweet spot of being accessible for most of us to talk to, while being able to make impact at scale.
It turns out there is plenty to do in my area of Redondo Beach! (If you’re local to Redondo Beach and want to help out, hit me up at kannapan[at]deeptikannapan.com.)
Here is a brief timeline of my explorations so far:
Jan – Mar 2022: As part of my first Research Quest, I read about the city-level intiative of pledging and tracking emissions reductions called Race to Zero, and got curious about Redondo Beach was part of it. It wasn’t.
June 2022: I started calling and emailing my city council members to ask if we wanted to join Race to Zero.
August 2022: While waiting for replies to my emails, I wrote letters to the editor to my local newspaper, urging all the neighboring cities to join Race to Zero. While doing this, I got a series of introductions to my local climate advocacy groups. My calendar started filling up with meetings with them – it was like getting the co-curricular fever in freshman year.
By this time, I had found and started reading the Redondo Beach Climate Action Plan that was adopted in 2017. I started pivoting my goal away from Race to Zero and toward looking for ways to help with the climate action plan.
So I started enquiring with the city about how progress with the plan was going, and I also finally worked up the courage to go to a city council meeting. I wrote about it here.
October 2022: From my enquiries, I learned that there had been no action to speak of on the Climate Action Plan. Hoping to help that change, I started reaching out to contacts at the climate advocacy groups I joined.
Everyone I spoke to was super-encouraging and bursting with tips and knowledge. So [after a brief interlude to freak out about the US midterm elections], it’s time to put all of those ideas into action!
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This page will be where I post updates on this project as it continues!